Do You Pay Too Much?

It all adds up. A dollar here, and a dollar there, and before you know it you paid out hundreds of dollars. By way of example, our last twelve US Cellular billings have averaged about $74.25 per month. That is for two iPhones with very little data usage. We don’t use much data because most of the time we are on our home Wi-Fi or other places that have free Wi-Fi.

I am a firm believer that we should not pay more for something we don’t use. In reviewing our statistics from US Cellular, it was obvious that we were using less than 1GB of data per month.

As a result, yesterday we switched our iPhone 15 Pro phones from US Cellular to PureTalk. In the last twenty-four hours I have concluded that this was a wise choice. Our new monthly bill for PureTalk is $41.34 with our discount. That is a savings of $32.91 per month, or almost $400 per year. This includes 3.5GB of data (we received an extra 0.5GB over the plan due to our AMAC membership.)

PureTalk Network Bars and Quality

Our US Cellular was usually two “bars.” Because we live in a subdivision that is in a valley, that isn’t surprising. The new PureTalk connection seems to be about the same, but there are places in our home where we only have one bar. However, when we were at our daughter’s home last night, I saw three bars on my iPhone. They live on a hill. So far all of my calls have worked, including calls to PureTalk.

PureTalk Customer Support

This afternoon Cindie and I had a problem sending text messages to other iPhone users. I called PureTalk’s customer service and spoke to a US-based representative who knew exactly what setting to update on the iPhone. When we were switching to PureTalk I was very impressed with all of the people who assisted us in the conversion. Having a smart phone with an eSIM certainly makes this easy.

Referrals

If you are interested in exploring what PureTalk offers, please use the following link: PureTalk

Cindie and I will get a credit of $50 if you sign up for the PureTalk service. If they ask, you can give them my name and my cell phone number: 608-206-0541.

One Other Thought

One share of SCHD  Schwab U.S. Dividend Equity ETF is currently trading at $28.21. I could buy one share of SCHD with each month’s savings in the lower cost of cellular services.

Don’t Forget the Other Bills

We did the same to save money on our home internet service by switching from AT&T to Spectrum. I also call Sirius each year when they try to increase the cost of the radio in my Ford Escape. Each year, rather than lose me as a paying customer, they drop the rate from $34 to about $7. The same holds true for our home security monitoring with SimpliSafe. This year we also switched our homeowner’s and auto insurance to Rural Insurance, saving hundreds of dollars.

Do you just grin (or grimace) and bear it each time someone raises the price of a service you use? Perhaps you don’t have the time it takes to save money, but when you are retired, you will want to think about this.